Scott Richmond Post Mortem

Here’s Scott Richmond’s take on what went wrong against the Yankees last night:

“Fastball location — plain and simple,” Richmond said. “Obviously, I wanted to get the fastball across better and you can work off your other pitches from there. But if your fastball is not getting across down in the zone, then it’s going to be a rough outing.”

Richmond was around but never in the zone all night, just off the corners with his fastballs (maybe a little intimidated by the Yankees?), but then getting hit and hit hard on belt high pitches when he was had to throw a strike.

What stumps me, though, is why he didn’t use his changeup to try and keep the lefty-packed Yankees lineup at bay. Richmond faced all lefties except for Alex Rodriguez (who he walked twice on a total of 9 pitches) and Francisco Cervelli (the Yankee’s backup catcher batting 9th), but he threw only two changeups all night, both just low for balls.

Because it breaks down and away from them, the changeup is typically a pitch that Richmond throws only to lefties (about 15 percent of the time), and as you can see from the last post on him, he has pretty good control over it (it’s also as effective as his other breaking pitches). Richmonds splits are now ridiculous: .172/.232/188 against RHB and .304/.375/.601 against LHB. I’d say he needs to use every trick he’s got against lefties!